Timothy Olyphant Almost Died Filming Revival Of His Greatest Show

During the filming of Justified: City Primeval, Timothy Olyphant and crew witnessed a gunfight between passengers in two vehicles close to the set.

By Douglas Helm | Published

Timothy Olyphant brings back one of his best shows and characters when he returns as Raylan Givens in the upcoming Justified: City Primeval. However, it sounds like filming hasn’t gone as smoothly as it could have, as Olyphant had a scary experience while shooting scenes in Chicago. He appeared on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, where he told Conan “We’ve got the road closed, and we hear gunshots,” adding, “It felt like eight or nine shots went off.”

While the cast and crew had heard gunshots in different neighborhoods while filming, this was the first time that the gunshot exchange went on for so long. Timothy Olyphant also said that they saw the cars speeding by the park, saying “here’s a guy shooting a pistol out the window that’s clearly been modified and the other guys out the sunroof with a little machine gun and he’s shooting a machine gun.” Fortunately, no one was injured in the incident.

If that’s not enough, three weeks later there was an on-set incident where someone threw an incendiary device at the set. The device didn’t go off, but you have to imagine that would be a scary experience. Timothy Olyphant and the rest of the cast and crew are probably glad to be done with filming at this point.

Fans have been anxiously waiting for Justified to return, so it’s a relief that nothing bad happened during production. Timothy Olyphant will once again be playing US Marshal Raylan Givens, who heads to Detroit to hunt down Clement Mansel aka “The Oklahoma Wildman.” Boyd Holdbrook plays Mansel, who is a serial killer that became renowned for assassinating a judge.

Justified: City Primeval is brought to us by showrunners Dave Andron and Michael Dinner, based on the Elmore Leonard novel City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit. Dinner is also set to direct episodes of the series. Along with Timothy Olyphant and Boyd Holbrook, the cast will include Aunjanue Ellis, Adelaide Clemens, Vondie Curtis Hall, Marin Ireland, Norbert Leo Butz, Victor Williams, Ravi Patel, and Olyphant’s real-life daughter Vivian Olyphant playing his Justified daughter Willa Givens.

There’s no word if any of the fan-favorite characters from Justified will be making an appearance, but plenty of people are hoping that they show up. Natalie Zea’s Winona Hawkins seems like one of the most likely candidates for an appearance, considering she’s the mother of Raylan’s kid. But more than anything, fans are hoping that we’ll get to see Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan talk face-to-face with Walton Goggins’ Boyd Crowder once again.

At the end of Justified, we saw Boyd Crowder behind bars, but maybe we could see some sort of Clarice and Hannibal-type relationship between Raylan and Boyd as Raylan searches for the serial killer. Regardless of how it happens, it does seem very likely that Jutisfied: City Primeval wouldn’t jump on the opportunity to pair Timothy Olyphant with some of the best characters from the original show. If you’re looking forward to this Jutsified revival, you’ll be able to catch it on FX sometime in 2023.

In the meantime, you can catch up on the original Justified series on Hulu. If you’ve never watched it before, it’s a great series and fairly underrated. You can also see Timothy Olyphant in the 2022 David O. Russell film Amsterdam and the Disney+ series The Book of Boba Fett.